


New Boy

by ixia_1



Category: History Boys - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 00:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30063945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ixia_1/pseuds/ixia_1
Summary: At the beginning of Third Form, there was a new boy in their class."Christ, he'll be eaten whole," Scripps muttered.Nothing is inevitable.
Relationships: David Posner & Donald Scripps, Stuart Dakin & Donald Scripps
Comments: 8
Kudos: 6





	New Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Contains references to canonical sexual abuse.

At the beginning of Third Form, there was a new boy in their class.

Scripps vaguely recognized him, an under-grown blonde child who didn't look old enough to have started grammar school yet. He thought he'd seen some of the younger boys bullying him in the playground.

Scripps and Dakin shared a raised-eyebrow glance as they settled into their chairs.

"Is it 'bring your baby brother to class' day, and no-one told me?" Dakin said, loudly enough to win sniggers from the boys at the surrounding desks.

The new boy stood awkwardly at the front of the room, looking between the disinterested teacher and the mostly occupied desks. His uniform and hair were too neat, his satchel too large for him.

Finally the teacher seemed to notice him and stopped jotting arcane, daunting equations on the blackboard.

"Boys, we have a newcomer. This is..." he hesitated.

The boy's shoulders hunched, but he said, "David Posner," in a ringing voice.

"He's been progressed a year to join us. I trust you'll make him welcome. Take a seat, Posner." The teacher turned back to the board.

The boy wavered over which aisle to try. Legs suddenly, casually, stretched out, shoes bumping in an amused scuffle, a teenage gauntlet.

The boy looked back and forth uncertainly. Giggles were stifled.

He lifted his chin, turned his back on the lot of them, and sat down stiffly at the desk directly in front of the teacher's table, the one nobody would inhabit except as punishment. The tips of his ears were red.

"Christ, he'll be eaten whole," Scripps muttered.

He wasn't.

"Think this time he'll actually cry?" Dakin said in Scripps' ear.

"Hasn't yet."

Posner had immediately been dubbed teacher's pet (and more colourful titles) by most of the class. He was, it had to be said, inclined to ingratiate. Not something that would win him any friends. Nor was his age, his size, his religion, and certainly not his social awkwardness and attempts to push his way into conversations that were (often deliberately) excluding him. Some of the boys also rather resented being shown up, intellectually, by a precocious child.

Scripps thought it was probably enjoyment of the latter point that had saved him from becoming a regular and too-obvious target for Dakin's sharp tongue. Instead, Dakin and Scripps adopted the role of sideline commentators on the sport had by a few of the others at Posner's expense.

Such as now, the louts strolling off laughing, leaving Posner staring at his books splayed in the muddy water at his feet. His fists were clenched, his narrow shoulders drawn up. He might cry, Scripps thought, but if he did, it looked like it would be from outrage.

"How would you feel, anyway, if that mountain of work they gave us yesterday was dissolving in a puddle?"

"I'd puncture their bicycle tires," Dakin said promptly. "I'd put dog shit in their lockers. But they wouldn't do it to me."

"They wouldn't, no," Scripps agreed ruefully.

He and Dakin had originally bonded at the edge of the playground, but Dakin had refused to remain there long. He wasn't the most popular boy in their year, not quite, not yet, but had built his little court from the brightest and wittiest and led them in sneering at the rest. It gave him a certain swagger, and the potential bullies he hadn't seduced into swearing fealty to him dared not touch him.

Posner snatched up his books, shaking them out with sharp, stilted movements. His head down, he looked quite defeated. Scripps wasn't convinced. In class the other day, when Lockwood had been toying with the new maths teacher, making the man look a fool--and twice over for not recognizing the fact—Posner had unexpectedly challenged him. Whether it was his acerbic piercing of Lockwood's mockery, or simply surprise, the lesson had proceeded in peace after that.

"He's an idiot," Posner had said at the end, when Scripps had made the mistake of lingering nearby while he gathered up his things. "The new teacher, I mean. But I would actually like to get through the syllabus by the end of term."

With the middle of the year approaching fast, and the abrupt and unfortunate exit of their previous teacher, Scripps was privately inclined to agree. Still, "Take it up with Lockwood, then, not me."

Posner fixed him with a look that was half nerves, half defiance. "They're your mates, aren't they? Dakin and his lot. Have a word."

Scripps had made no promises, but he had, in fact, as casually as he could, and their instruction in algebra had progressed more smoothly after that.

Bullies and muddy homework being immune to intercession, and having no interest in kicking the lad when he was down, Dakin and Scripps left Posner to his misfortune.

"Two and a half more years of such company," Scripps said. They'd be astounded if the book-dunkers stayed on for A-levels with the rest of them.

"Parting will be such _sweet_ sorrow."

For Posner's sake, it was a good thing they had English next. Their English master, known by all as Mr. Hector, was unlikely to give him as much grief as some over the state of his books. Posner had made two allies so far: Akthar, a boy not much larger and rather more singular in their homogeneous crowd than Posner, but naturally more gregarious, easygoing and likeable, and Mr. Hector, who had taken one look at the new arrival in their form and, in his own inimitable and off-hand way, clasped him to his metaphorical breast.

At the start of the second English lesson of the year, he'd plonked a book probably too heavy for Posner to lift by himself down on the desk in front of him.

"Very important job for you, new boy. Every time you hear an unfamiliar or complex word—one you think the rest of the class may be lacking from their woefully inadequate vocabularies—you find it in the dictionary and read out the definition so that all may be enlightened."

Posner had sat up very straight and positively glowed with the attention and responsibility.

This had, of course, made him even less popular with the Neanderthal ("uncivilized, unintelligent, uncouth") faction.

"Got a poem memorized?"

"Just about. I'll take my chances on being called on. It's not right, the amount of extra work they all give us. Each one seems to think their subject is the only one we're taking."

"You'll be fine, anyway—Hector likes you."

"Everyone likes me," Dakin said, not entirely without justification. "But you're the one who's going to write."

Scripps made a non-committal noise, still unsure if sharing this fledgling ambition had been a good idea.

Posner was the last one in the classroom door. They looked to see if he had been crying, but it was hard to tell.

Posner never stopped being more awkward, small and young than the rest of them—always too eager on the rare occasions he was included, and otherwise quietly watching them all in that odd way he had, at once sharp and hopelessly naïve. He took an age to grow, longer even, it seemed, than his original cohort in the form below. His voice remained high and piercing while theirs settled down into impending adulthood. But over time, in part thanks to the admission of Akthar to the group, it became Dakin's crew he trailed after rather than any other. He was clever, that was a given, but he also picked up their caustic style with ease. Scripps was sure the jabs aimed his way hurt, but he didn't back down, clearly aware it would be fatal to do so. He wasn't quite _one of them_ , hadn't quite won their respect, and might never, but he was evidently too stubborn—or too desperate—to quit. With them, even if he wasn't embraced, he wasn't alone.

Scripps found himself thinking this way at times, as if he were writing the story of his school days and the characters that peopled them even while living it. He was undecided whether this was a habit to be cultivated or cured. He though on it sometimes during the slower parts of mass, which he was attending now with a frequency that alarmed his parents, and found himself simultaneously able to congratulate himself on his insight and maturity, and condemn himself as a pretentious git.

Not that his friends were much better, in their own manner. It must be their age.

He confessed himself to Hector after his O-level results. A good deal of the response seemed to him unhelpful, but he did start carrying a notebook with him at all times, as advised.

In Sixth Form, the Neanderthals were indeed gone, and much was changed. It felt afresh like school was a place where education could in fact improve you and your life, like there were exciting doors just ahead and this was where you would earn the keys.

They took fewer classes, but more intensely. It was in their final year, with A-level exams not nearly far enough away, that Hector introduced the idea of 'silly time'.

His classes had always been unorthodox, private affairs, an oasis in the mundanity of other lessons. None of them were therefore put off by the notion of memorizing not only poems and snatches of literature and plays, but watching and learning to re-enact old films in their personal time. Enough of them were inclined to perform, anyway, and the ones that weren't were rarely pushed into it. They knew each other and Mr. Hector well enough by now that embarrassment was quickly subsumed by the spirit of competition and the delightful notion that they might one day catch their all-knowing mentor out.

Scripps wondered if this sort of game was the first step on the path to atheism; or if the lack of it was the worse culprit. Certainly Hector's status was a strange one, with his acolytes' early devotion clinging on secretly to the contempt born of time and teenage-hood and new insights, but, no matter what, he was always, always at the centre of it all.

It was Scripps who first asked if the old piano in the corner could be employed. He'd been playing for some of the choir practice sessions since the master had broken his arm, and was feeling over-confident. His and Crowther's 'ending' had proved such a hit that he'd been inundated by requests to learn film scores to accompany the others.

It was Posner's fault, however, that he'd ended up providing a sporadic soundtrack to the rest of their time at school.

Scripps had a good ear, and could generally pick up a tune without sheet music. Hector sometimes played them records in class, thematically. Scripps was loitering in the classroom one rainy lunchtime, messing around at the piano with one of those old standards, because Dakin had insisted on trying to sneak across to the girls' school and he really couldn't be bothered with all that, too Catholic and too sensible ('boring', Dakin had accused) to go to such lengths for an illicit snog.

"Oh, I like this one," a familiar voice said just behind him, making him falter on the next chord.

Posner perched on a nearby desk, wet with rain, and said, a little imperiously, "Keep playing."

"You've thrown me off, now." But he put his hands back on the keys and started at the beginning again, trying a bit harder now that he had an audience, even if was only Pos.

He was surprised when Posner started to sing along. He knew the boy liked music, rarely seen without his Walkman, and often humming along, but hadn't heard him sing since his voice had broken. He'd never been in the choir, only looked in wistfully at practices. He obviously _did_ sing, though, no hesitation and no trouble finding the notes. His voice sounded good, ringing out through the still room. And, in a different way than with the choir, it turned out that it was more fun to play when you were making music with someone else—leading Posner, being pushed by him to play with better rhythm, trying to fall into synchrony with each other, and the feeling when they succeeded.

Scripps sustained the final chord, and Posner was grinning at him, the proper grin he occasionally wore that made him look bright and carefree and mischievous, and Scripps grinned right back.

They prepared an ending from an old musical—too easy a challenge for Hector, obviously, but it gave them both an excuse to show off to the rest of the class. And after that, it somehow became normal for Scripps to be at the piano at the start or end of English classes, and for Hector or the other boys to make requests, and for him to accompany Posner, who was never shy about performing, had never, Scripps thought, been shy at all, just too clever for his age group and too young for theirs, and his angles too ill-fitting for everyone. Except that no-one in Dakin's group complained about him hanging around these days, and he smiled more, and if he would never be entirely one of them he certainly wasn't anyone else's, and woe betide any outsider who tried to speak to him the way Timms or Lockwood sometimes did.

"I expect I'll be joining you in the bike ride lottery after this weekend," Dakin said, with studied indifference.

"I hope you'll get better birthday presents than that," Scripps said wryly.

Stories had filtered down last year from the Upper Sixth, ever so funny, ever so casual, tacitly understood never, never to be shared with an adult. After all, they weren't children any more, and it wasn't as if it meant anything—just a joke. Just one of those things.

The rumours had been more shocking than the reality, for Scripps.

"I'm sure he's looking forward to it. A new boy on the rota. Don't be too disappointed if he doesn't start in first time. Apparently he needs to warm up to it."

"Well, we all know he's a coward. Must be, if this is all he ever does. Can you imagine his poor wife?"

It was strange, the dissonance between the glamour of the teacher they'd all idolised for a time—and still must, on some level, given the impulse to a kind of loyalty—and the clownish, pitiable figure they now saw away from the theatre of the classroom. Had to see. After all, if he was a clown, their own sad old fool, then it was nothing, and it had to be nothing, therefore he was a clown. The converse proof.

"I doubt it's why he married her, or she him. Anyway, let's not think on teachers' wives, or lives, or bike rides. Tottie's torturing us with the word count for this latest essay, and I must get on."

It really was just one of those things, he supposed, something to be accepted and endured and laughed away. Hector was still a good teacher, and good fun. But sometimes Scripps looked at Posner and felt a kind of gratitude for his presence. Bigotry appeared to be an easy vice, and not one Scripps wanted to contract due to limited references.

He was also, when he thought about it, grateful on Posner's behalf that he would be only seventeen when he left the school.

It really was nothing; but still.

There would be no new boys for their little unit in that last, additional term—or so they thought. And then, Irwin, and the revelations he brought.

What he revealed in them had been there already, like Dakin's desire for affirmation or Posner's ruthlessness in pursuing a goal. He didn't so much change them, as pull from them some of their best and worst traits, and push them until each arrived at the point where they refused to be pushed any further.

It was Irwin who came off worst for the experience, of course, future career notwithstanding.

"Do you still think about him? What might have been?" Scripps said one day while they were packing for Oxford.

"Who?" Dakin said, not turning round. "Irwin?" Thus answering the question.

Starting university, they were all new boys together. Scripps thought Posner probably appreciated that. He was still the baby of the group, but the group was now divided and diluted in the throngs, and the playing field levelled between them for the first time.

Even Dakin was struggling to maintain his swagger, and looked a bit lost. The orientation had been intimidating, socially, even for the boy to whom all that came so easily.

"Chin up," Scripps murmured to him, through his own nerves. "Think how much more we deserve to be here than all the lot who tunnelled in with their silver spoons."

Dakin straightened his shoulders and tossed his head. "Fucking right we do," he said, as if he'd never had a wobble.

He clapped Scripps on the back and sauntered over to the nearest group of girls.

Scripps turned to Posner, surprised to find him looking around with an air of disillusionment.

"It's smaller than when we were first here," he said.

Scripps had been thinking the exact opposite.

"It's _Oxford_ ," he said, aware that he sounded just as provincial and overawed as he felt. "It's what we've been working towards for years—give it a chance, at least!"

"It just suddenly seems like Rudge was right. What was all that effort really for? When all it took was a bit of lying and trickery to get in."

"Hardly _all_ it took. That was just, like Irwin and Felix said, presentation. We earned it. You were the keenest of the lot!"

"I needed to get away from Sheffield, from my family." Posner stuck his hands in his pockets, hunching up his shoulders the way he always had. "It could have been anywhere. I thought...it was something to strive for, so I did. And now that I'm here, it's just...another place. And I'm still...me."

"Fucking hell, Pos, if you keep setting all your standards the way you do you'll spend your whole life disappointed."

Posner flinched and cast an injured look at Scripps.

The crowd was breaking up, heading for their respective colleges. Posner turned away. Akthar was waiting for him on the path.

Scripps experienced a moment of prescience. All of their lives were about to diverge. This was another moment history, for each of them, could go down more than one track. He had his own concerns; he wasn't responsible for the boy; he could let it go, write it down later. They would change, drift apart. He'd make new friends. Maybe he'd forget this. In another version of the world, he did. But something close to panic made him call, "Pos, wait—I'm sorry."

Posner looked back, small and unhappy and not quite so young as he had been. Scripps thought that the last time he'd seen him smile was the day they'd celebrated getting their acceptance letters.

"Maybe it is just another place. But isn't that the point? It's a fresh start. Nothing's inevitable, you know. Not much, at least. Maybe Oxford won't be all we hoped. Maybe it won't transform us into the people we want to be. But maybe it's the kind of space where we can transform ourselves."

Posner quirked a sad little smile at him. "We're here to do the opposite of leaving the past behind."

"History only repeats if we don't _learn_ from it."

"I can see you've been transformed already—when did you become such a platitude-spouting optimist?"

"When did _you,_ of all people, start giving up?"

Posner stared at him as they both realized how angry he suddenly was, to have shouted like that.

Scripps deflated, running his hands down his face. "Look, just—don't condemn Oxford and yourself without even trying. There's so much potential still laid out ahead of us...You were always the cleverest of us, the bravest too, and it's honestly sort of galling if _you_ just chuck this chance away."

He didn't know what was going on in Posner's head, but he'd been everyone's patient confidant long enough to guess. Irwin, Hector—speak no ill of the dead, but honestly, fuck them both.

"It's not inevitable," he said. " _Try._ "

Posner swallowed hard and then, thankfully, nodded.

"You were excited," he said, his voice unsteady. "I didn't mean to spoil that."

"You haven't." Then, always too honest, "I'll get over it. Anyway, I think _scared shitless_ is more accurate."

He startled as Posner threw his arms around him in a hug. It struck him, though he must have already known, that he was shorter than Posner now.

"What's that for?"

"To thank you. For...the songs and the listening and, well, not treating me like I'm as peculiar as I am."

Scripps pushed him off gently. "You're weren't peculiar, just out of place."

This smile was weak but happier. "So I'll try...another place. This time somewhere none of us ended up by accident, but because we _earned_ it."

"That's it. We'll show the lot of them. We've been little fish before, and we won't remain so for long."

"Please don't let's swim apart, though, Scrippsy, I'd hate that, I think. Like you said, history is about making use of the past. You don't have to give up _everything_ old to make something new."

A knot inside Scripps' chest came loose. He looked around at the hopeful teenage faces amidst the ancient stones; at Posner, and Dakin and Akthar in the distance. A place to metamorphose. To be made anew, but not at the mercy of the winds, with the moorings of friends who had known you since childhood. Maybe some were here to begin again. He was, he realized, just hoping to build higher on his foundations.

"No," he said, suddenly feeling lighter, less small in the crowd and the shadow of the high-walled centuries. "No, we won't let that happen."

When he set off for his college he knew, contrary to first impressions, that Oxford would not eat him, or any of them, whole.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for any inaccuracies regarding the British education system.


End file.
